Lonely Sea Light

What is in a name? I've been meaning to write an explanation as to why I chose "Lonely Sea Light". I thought I should write about it before my original reasoning fades away.

I was looking for something to express a number of things about myself. My terminal loneliness, my love for the beach, my love of music and my engineering profession. There aren't many titles that fit that description without taking up a few lines of text. But in a brainstorming fit, the current one came to me.

I started with the idea of naming it after a lighthouse, like Long Point Light or Portland Head Light. But those weren't very suitable, so I looked to music to find something more appropriate and found a Beach Boys song. Forty-one years ago, Brian Wilson wrote "Lonely Sea", one of the most hauntingly beautiful surf songs I've ever heard.

The lonely sea
It never stops
For you or me
It moves along
From day to day

That's why my love
You'll never stay

This pain in my heart
These tears in my eyes
Please tell the truth
You're like the lonely sea

Taken another way, the name expresses my tendency to temper my sadness with humor and laughter. I may be stranded in the vastness of a dark and lonely sea, but the distant light gives me direction, gives me hope.

Deconstructing a name and the motives behind it is a little too demystifying. I already have pangs of regret for even trying to explain it, perhaps making too much of it. I wonder if the future me will appreciate the time it took for the present me to overanalyze these three simple words.